In need of a drink - Grey Goose Cake

It's been a busy couple of weeks for me and a few major decisions have been made and although mixed with nervousness, fear and uncertainty, excitement is now starting to set in.

Very soon I'll be flying my designer cake flag up high, but more on that when the time is near ;)

This week has been a real cake challange. A late request came through for a Grey Goose bottle shaped cake. 'Yes I want the cake to be a real 3D bottle - standing up' the lovely lady said. No issues there I thought...

Until I started doing the maths and ratios. For the number of servings she'd requested the cake was going to be approx 55cm tall. As I started carving and stacking the cakes, fear and panic started to settle in. The cake was going to be really tall and skinny and was all just being held in place by a center pole AND to top it all off it was wobbling and not straight.

Thanks to the ganache, everything eventually evened itself out and once all the cake settled in place it stopped wobbling. I knew the cake had enough support but I was still so worried about it because of its height and width.

The finished cake, all details were hand painted.

Nervousness started creeping in when I realised that this cake was really heavy and I would have to drive it to the venue at night in the city. My original plan was to walk this cake to the venue since I only live a couple of blocks away, but the boyfriend pointed out - big cake + busy Sydney traffic + drunk people on the streets = Disaster. Oops, I guess I didn't think that through very well.

A really big thank you to the super nice guys at the Rhodes Shopping Centre liquor shop who allowed me to take heaps of photos of their Grey Goose bottle for this cake.

Thank goodness for the boyfriend and my cousin who came along to help 'babysit' the cake in the car and we found a parking spot right in front of the venue. We all (cake included) all got there ok and as we arrived home, it starting raining. Thank you cake gods!

To illustrate how tall this cake was.

Start your cake engines…

Exactly what goes into making a car cake?

A lot of ratios! Numbers and maths are not my thing, that's why I like making colourful, pretty cakes :)

Pictures of all angles of the car - to make sure that everything is in proportion. I can't express myself very well mathematically, so as you can see there are also random numbers scribbled all over the place.

The numbers side of my brain finally got its act together and together with its creative partner (who spent a good 6 hours hand painting the designs on the car) created a car that was ready to race!

Broom Broom!

Daring to Dream!

I've forgotten what it's like to be a kid. Where you didn't have to worry about paying bills, the future, a job or the leaking sink. All that you wondered about was tomorrow and where your biggest concern was if you were going to get to the next level in your computer game or what's for dinner. But where, most importantly you could let your imagination run wild and dream the impossible. I remember my brother used to ask me 'if aliens landed and took over the world and we couldn't run away, what would we do?' Which adult in their right mind would ask their friend that question?

During my visit to the Kennedy Space Centre and Disneyland, it made me really think. Both places catered towards kids and you could just see the glow on the kids faces when they saw the huge space ships or got to meet Mickey for the first time. Both never failed to remind kids that they could do and be anything. The astronauts in the space centre invited the kids to go into space with them one day and in Disney, kids were wished 'may all your dreams come true'. The cheesy alarm bells were ringing in my cynical side, but my sentimental side felt so touched.

It really did make me wonder, when did it all change? When did we change from kids with potential to hearing the negative voices of reality get into our head with 'you can't', 'but', 'never' and 'yeah right!'? Maybe it was when we entered the 'real world' or when grownups started saying 'don't be silly!' about our dreams.

I've decided that I will no longer just dream and wonder about the 'what ifs' but I will do! I must admit, I'm feeling slightly scared of the unknown, but a wise person once said to me 'if you keep doing what you are doing, you'll keep getting what you've got'. Think about it :)